[Bjonnh.net]# _

Natural products (NPs) continue to inform the discovery and development of a diversity of drugs, both marketed and investigational. Pain, one of the most common of human experiences and profound challenges in medicine and biology, has emerged at the core of an urgent societal problem, in the United States and globally. The present study employs a retrospective analysis of an extensive set of published literature curated in the NAPRALERT database to identify NPs with experimental evidence of bioactivity supporting the selection and prioritization of NP leads with promise in pain management.

Abstract from conference NAPRALERT is a database on natural products, including data on ethnobotany, chemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, and clinical trials from literature dating back to the 19th century. Established in 1975 by Norman R. Farnsworth, it became a web accessible resource in 2005 but soon became stagnant while literature grew exponentially. After a complete rewrite of the platform, the focus is now on connecting this resource to the rest of the existing databases and expanding its usability.

NAPRALERT is a database on natural products, including data on the ethnobotany, chemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, and clinical trials. It was established in 1975 by the late Norman R. Farnsworth, at a time when computerized databases were just starting. It became web-accessible in 2005. Due to resource constraints, few enhancements were made to the existing database structure. Now, 10 years later, NAPRALERT faces the challenge of catching-up with other well-established resources.

High-throughput biology has contributed a wealth of data on chemicals, including natural products (NPs). Recently, attention was drawn to certain, predominantly synthetic, compounds that are responsible for disproportionate percentages of hits but are false actives. Spurious bioassay interference led to their designation as pan-assay interference compounds (PAINS). NPs lack comparable scrutiny, which this study aims to rectify. Systematic mining of 80+ years of the phytochemistry and biology literature, using the NAPRALERT database, revealed that only 39 compounds represent the NPs most reported by occurrence, activity, and distinct activity.

A recent article by Baell(1) on the problems experienced by medicinal chemists with pan-assay interference compounds (PAINS) and Shoichet’s work(2) on the impact of aggregation occurring in high throughput screening libraries, prompts a consideration of how these and other similar problems are experienced by pharmacognosists with promiscuous invalid metabolites as panaceas (PIMPs). Contrary to the classical definition of secondary metabolites as being species specific (or near specific), several natural products, particularly in the more extensively investigated plant kingdom, are common across species, genera, and even families (e.